David
Zuniga had no sooner drifted off to sleep when the master monk
began prodding him again.

“Dave,”
the monk whispered, “what is your philosophy on
emptiness?”

Dutifully,
Zuniga sat up and did his best to articulate a response in
broken Korean.

Zuniga,
a normally upbeat interfaith chaplain at an Austin hospital, was
drained from the relentless demands of ordination training to
become a Buddhist monk. If he made it through the 25 days of
preparation, he would be the first Westerner ordained in the
Taego order of Son, or Korean Zen, Buddhism.

The
monks “were kind of looking at me as, ‘OK, let’s see how
the Westerner does,’ ” Zuniga says, recounting his
September in Southwest Korea where he was ordained.

It
was hard to fathom that at 35, as an ultramarathon runner with a
black belt in tae kwon do and years of meditation practice,
Zuniga would not withstand the ascetic lifestyle and physical
challenges of the Sonamsa Temple of Chogye Mountain.

Although
he did not break under the weight, he struggled, and in the
process learned about humility.

Zuniga,
ordained Dae-il Sunim, returned to Austin, where he works
primarily with cancer patients, with a depth of understanding
for those who suffer and an inspiration to share his philosophy
and practice with others.

“There’s
a saying in Buddhism,” Zuniga says. “Suffering is the
teacher.”

Over
the course of the training, Zuniga would endure illness, a
serious knee injury, aching sadness and hopelessness. To
overcome attachments, he was forbidden to carry any personal
effects — even his wedding ring — or to call Sunni, his
newly pregnant wife, from the temple pay phone he passed every
day.

To
overcome ego and desires, he had to perform thousands of
prostrations, sinking to the floor and rising again without
using his hands. His life was consumed by chanting, fasting,
study and temple chores. Ordination candidates always walked in
single file, always with their right hands folded over their
left in a sign of humility. Meals consisted of rice, vegetables
and water. Zuniga slept on the floor with a single blanket as
his only bedding.

One
day, after complaining to a friend, Zuniga faced a simple truth
that helped him understand the purpose of his ordeal.

“This
is the Buddhist way,” his friend told him. “You endure
things.”

It
was an important lesson for Zuniga, who works as chaplain for
Seton Cancer Care Team and has seen people meet the end they
feared the most: dying in a hospital, in pain and alone.

He
doesn’t try to explain away the seeming injustice of the
patient’s fate or promise a better life in the hereafter. He
first offers silence. If patients ask, Zuniga, who grew up
Catholic in Virginia, will pray with them. Sometimes, they
prefer joking and talking about anything except cancer and
death.

His
time in Korea deepened his capacity to empathize with patients,
he says. As did a period of sorrow when he returned from the
temple and discovered that Sunni had miscarried.

“You
don’t seek to alter the experience one way or another,” he
says. “You just sit with it, and you learn from it. In a
sense, it’s good to have these experiences so you can learn to
help other people.”

Zuniga
also looks for ways to apply Zen to the burdensome things in
life. Recently he began to see the constant beeping and buzzing
pagers in the hospital as a modern day Zen bell used during
meditation and chants. His pager could be a call to mindfulness.

Zuniga
learned about the Taego order while pursuing his master’s degree
in religious studies at Harvard University. There he befriended
a Korean monk named Ilmee Sunim who urged Zuniga to pursue
ordination and helped arrange his first trip to Korea in 2001.

“I
thought he would be a great contribution to the Taego order,
especially at a time when the order is interested in outreaching
abroad,” Ilmee said.

The
order’s allowance for married monks was a key factor in Zuniga’s
decision, but he had held an interest in Korean Buddhism since
he was a child and felt drawn to Korean Zen’s strains of
Confucianism and the grueling intensity of the Taego order’s
practice.

“The
hardness makes it good,” Zuniga says. “Often in life
we have aversion to things which we designate as being hard. . .
. But ascetic practice can be transforming.”

In
his South Austin home, he keeps a meditation space with an
altar, pillow, Buddha statues and other accoutrements specific
to Korean Zen, including a drum for chanting called a mok tok.
He wears a mala, a string of wooden beads, and, on special
occasions, red and gray monastic robes.

Zuniga
doesn’t want to limit his practice to the meditation area in his
small study, though. Zuniga has started a Web site, a
comprehensive introduction to Buddhism and the specifics of the
Taego order. And his next goal is a meditation class for people
of all religious backgrounds.

But
even as a monk and a meditation teacher, Zuniga emphasizes, he
is still a student.

“I’m
not enlightened,” he says, laughing. “I’m just
Dave.”

eflynn@statesman.com;
445-3812

ON
THE WEB: Find more information on http://sonbuddhism.org.

The
Taego order

•The
Taego Order is the oldest lineage of Son (the Korean word for
Zen) Buddhism and is the second-largest Zen lineage in Korea. A
Buddhist lineage is much like a denomination in Christianity.

•The
order, which allows monks to be married, claims about 7,000
monks and nuns.